Ryan Huish is an Associate Professor of Biology at The University of Virginia’s College at Wise. He received his bachelor’s degree from Brigham Young University studying botany and cultural anthropology and received his masters and Ph.D. degrees in Plant Sciences at the City University of New York and The New York Botanical Garden. With a background in botany and cultural anthropology, he is fascinated with how historic and modern peoples around the world use plants for food, medicine, art, music, and metaphor—a professional field of study called “ethnobotany”. His research interests incorporate an interdisciplinary approach to address basic and applied questions in ethnobotany, ecology, and plant conservation. He focuses on the cultural regions of the central Appalachians, Tonga, Fiji, and Papua New Guinea. He loves spending time outdoors with his family and enjoys cooking with plants, international traditional music, religious studies, poetry, art, gardening, hiking, camping, and hunting for wild edibles. He and his family practice applying ethnobotanical principles in their agroforestry farm in the Virginia Appalachians.